Until The Last Rose Dies
by Adara-chan67
Summary: A hunt brings up memories for Sam that are both welcome and unwelcome. Oneshot songfic, SamJess pairing, rated for very slight language.


DISCLAIMER: I don't own Supernatural or its characters. The rights to _them_ belong strictly to Eric Kripke. I also don't own the song "One More Day" which is the property of Diamond Rio. There, I'm done.

AN: Okay, there's something that has to be explained before we go into this. This story is a mix between present-day and the past, so a lot of it is going to be told in flashbacks. So, that's what the italics mean! I'm gonna try to make it easy to tell, though, so hopefully no one will get confused.

Okay, on with it, then!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Last night I had a crazy dream. **

**A wish was granted just for me. **

**It could be for anything. **

**I didn't ask for money, **

**Or a mansion in Malibu. **

**I simply wished for one more day with you. **

_Firestarter: an extremely rare magical creature who has the power to control fire in all its forms. The ability usually manifests itself when the Firestarter is around ten years old._

Sam Winchester felt a lurch in the vicinity of his stomach as he read the words on the computer screen, from which the web page glared at him, and he imagined that he was quite pale. He's known what he was looking for, of course, but actually seeing it there, in plain black type…it was just _worse_ than he'd imagined.

Sighing heavily, Sam turned away from his computer and picked up the newspaper clipping lying on the table next to him. A teenager smiled at him from under a headline proclaiming, "15-YEAR-OLD CHARLEY YOUNG DETERMINED AS MISSING." The paper then continued in a lengthy story about the boy. The article was dated a year ago.

Strange to think that this…_child_…was to be their next hunt. Their next kill…

And even stranger that Sam himself was soon to come up against fire again…

_"Why, Sam?" _

The voice rang through his head again—the soft, feminine voice repeating hard words never said, never spoken, but that nevertheless echoed back through time and stuck in his head, firmly and forever.

Before he stopped to think about it, Sam let himself drift back…

_+Flashback—August 2002+ _

_Sam hadn't actually left his dorm room since he'd arrived at Stanford for orientation two days ago. He'd endured the horror of orientation, and then he'd escaped to his room and hidden there, where the only person he had to deal with was his roommate. _

_As far as complete strangers who were living with you went, Derek didn't seem like a bad buy. He kept his side of the room fairly survivable, he didn't blare his music _too_ loudly, and so far he hadn't made any obnoxious attempts, either to get Sam _out_ of the room, or to bring other people _in

_As if conjured up by Sam's very thoughts, the door opened right as the thought occurred, and Derek walked in. "Hey, Sam," he said casually, as if the two of them were long-time friends. _

_Sam wasn't sure what to think about that. _

_"Hi," he said, quickly—and calmly—placing a pile of genes over the scythe he'd just put in the drawer. He glanced up with the greeting—and that was the moment when he got his first glance at Jessica Moore. _

_She was just standing in the doorway, waiting patiently for Derek to find whatever he was currently rummaging for, looking around with the expression of merry disapproval that all women seem to have when looking at the living quarters of any man. _

_The first thought Sam had was that she wasn't the _prettiest_ woman he'd ever seen. Her face was pretty average, framed by medium-length blond hair. She wasn't tall, but not unusually short, either. She didn't look as if she'd spent a great deal of time deciding what to wear, but her jeans and tank top looked good on her anyway. In short, she was pretty much your average-looking girl. _

_But her brown eyes sparkled with ready amusement, even though there was nothing to laugh about right now, and her mouth looked perfectly ready to stretch into a smile at the slightest provocation. The very energy radiating off her _made_ her attractive. _

_As if she realized he was studying her, the girl turned to Sam, and grinned at him, stepping forward. "You must be Derek's roommate, right? I'm Jessica Moore." _

_Sam took the hand she offered, hesitantly. "Sam." He didn't give a last name—he hadn't decided yet if he was going to give _that_ information out. _

_"Don't ever call him Sammy," Derek advised distractedly, now digging through his drawers. _

_Sam blushed a little—Derek had made that mistake only once, but that was enough. However, Derek had taken the harsh, "Don't call me that," and the subsequent shove with unfeigned ease, and his behavior toward Sam hadn't changed one jot. He also hadn't mentioned the incident again, until now. _

_"Oh. Well, then, we'll just have to come up with a different nickname, won't we?' Jessica said brightly, her grin never faltering. "You're a freshman, right?" _

_"Uh…yeah." _

_"So am I, but I know lots of people, anyway, mainly 'cause I've lived here all my life. My brother graduated a year ago, but Derek's only a junior, so I hang around with him, now." _

_Sam blinked as she stopped talking. He couldn't for the life of him figure out how to reply. _

_"Okay, so now that you've finished scaring the hell outta my roommate…" Derek murmured, joining them and handing Jessica a CD. "Here. You're gonna wanna marry me when you finish it." _

_Jessica rolled her eyes. "Not likely, O Great Provider of Music and Insanity. At least, not without the help of a piano or safe falling on my head," she countered, already turning the CD over to look at the song list as she headed for the door. _

_"Oh, hey, Sam, by the way," Derek added, looking over his shoulder as he followed her. "There's a party tonight—sort of a last-night-on-the-outside thing. Everyone's invited—whether you know anyone or not." He said the last part shrewdly, and Sam thought that maybe he wasn't hiding his discomfort so well after all… _

_"Hm…I'll think about it," Sam said in reply, already knowing he wouldn't. _

_"Yeah, Sam, you should come," Jessica said, finally taking her eyes off the apparently-coveted CD. _

_  
Sam spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about it. _

_+End Flashback+ _

**One more day. **

**One more time. **

**One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied. **

**But then again, **

**I know what it would do. **

**Leave me wishing still for one more day with you.**

Sam came abruptly back to the present when a brown paper bag dropped to the table in front of him, and Dean spoke loudly next to him. "Soup's on, Sammy, snap out of it."

Sam blinked as the too-familiar images faded away, and it was only then that he noticed the amount of time that had passed. Dean had already gone out for dinner and brought him something back, and while he'd been thinking his laptop had long since switched its screen-saver. He'd long since set the newspaper aside and forgotten entirely about his fact-finding mission, but it came rushing back the second Dean asked, "So, what'd ya dig up?"

Sam replied without words, letting Dean take his spot and moving to the bed, taking the take-out bag with him. He opened it automatically, though he wasn't the least bit hungry, and started in on the fairly decent burger as Dean started to browse through his findings.

He had just finished the burger and started in on the fries—Dean would be annoyed if he didn't finish it all off—when his brother spoke. "Are you sure this is our guy, Sam?"

Sam shrugged. "He fits the bill. Check out the paper. Next to the computer," he added when Dean felt around without taking his eyes off the computer screen, and thus came up with nothing. "There's also some important stuff that's not in there," he continued as Dean read. "When he was younger—ten or so—there was a series of small fires at his house. They always got put out fast, and no one accused him of anything, but I found out that a Firestarter usually comes into his ability around that age."

"So that fits, but Sam, it says here that he was always a good kid. Had lots of friends, got along with his parents, no drugs…there's nothing _here_ that indicates he could be our guy!"

"Yeah…_except_ that he got put in foster care last year, after his parents, his little sister, and his older brother died in a car accident. I found an interview with his foster parents, and according to _them_, Charley didn't get along with them at all." Dean looked up with a raised eyebrow, and Sam went on to clarify. "They said he made it obvious that he didn't want to be there. He wouldn't follow their rules, he started staying out all night, he fell in with the wrong crowd, started doing drugs…" Sam shook his head. "The kid basically turned a complete 180—just about overnight, too. My guess is he's not exactly sane nowadays. All of that, along with the fact that his foster parents were found burned to a crisp in their beds days after he disappeared—it doesn't add up to anything good, Dean."

Dean seemed to think about it a moment, and then shrugged. "And I'm guessing all the other crisps that've turned up since last year were old friends, or other people who had some sort of connection with him." He hardly needed to wait for Sam's nod. "Okay, great, so we've found our guy. Now how do we _find_ him?"

Sam couldn't help but grin at that. "Well, believe it or not, he still has a _cell_. _And_ it has GPS."

Dean laughed aloud at that. "Ha, finally the evil guy is the idiot! Did you track him down?"

"Not yet—I figure we can do it tomorrow. All his other kills were pretty spaced out and the last one was only a week ago, so as long as he doesn't find out someone's onto him, we've got some time."

Dean didn't question him on that. "Okay, then. I'm gonna go out for a while—there's a bar a couple blocks down that's just _screaming_ my name. And hopefully it won't be the only one…" He smirked, and Sam rolled his eyes. "I assume you're gonna stay here and brood?"

As a reply, Sam finished off the fries and tossed the bag at Dean, who caught it deftly and rolled his eyes.

"God, kid, ya gotta stop being such a party animal—I'll start to worry."

And then he was gone, and Sam was alone.

He sat on the bed for a moment, then sighed and got up, going over to put all the research away. He turned his laptop off and stowed it in its case, then put the case with his duffel bag. Then he went back to the table to pick up the newspaper clipping and shove it in a drawer somewhere.

The second he lifted it up and looked down at the boy, he fell back into the memories.

_+Flashback—October 2002+ _

_"See, isn't this better?" Jessica asked, stopping without any warning and sitting right down on the lawn a little down the path from the Stanford dorm they'd just left. _

_Sam smiled and flopped down next to her, lying down on his back with his head pillowed on his arm, staring up into the diamond-studded sky, which was remarkably clear tonight. "I never said it wouldn't be." _

_Jessica put one hand on the ground on his other side, using it to brace herself as she leaned down and kissed him. "Just goes to show how well I know you, Winchester," she murmured with her lips an inch from his. "I _knew_ you hated being in there." _

_He smiled, and moved to close the space between them. "And I thought I was hiding it so well," he joked as they parted. In fact, he'd been hiding his aversion to the crowd _terribly_, and he knew it. _

_Jessica kissed him one more time, then lay down next to him, laying her head on his chest. He slid an arm around her, and for a while, they lay in silence. _

_"You don't like to talk about yourself, do you?" _

_Sam shoved himself up on his elbow, and stared down at her. "What?" _

_"Well…okay, I'm sorry. Never mind. Forget it…" she replied quickly. _

_Sam lay back down slowly, and kissed her forehead. "No, it's just…what brought _that _on?" _

_Jessica shrugged. "I dunno. Just something I've been…thinking about lately. Well, okay, to be _completely_ honest, it was Derek who brought it up…the day we met. He's…pretty good at reading people, and it didn't take him long to notice that you never say a word about your life, or your home, or your family. I mean, it took you a month after we started dating to tell me your last _name_." _

_Sam knew he should have been angry that they'd been talking about him behind his back, but he just couldn't bring himself to care. Besides, he couldn't expect them _not_ to, if he was going to insist on being so secretive. _

_"I'm a Capricorn." _

_"…What?" Jessica asked, staring up at him in confusion. _

_"I'm a Capricorn," Sam repeated. "I love to read. I'm fluent in Latin. I want to be a lawyer, so I'm majoring in government, law, and political science. I live with my father, but not my mother, and before I came here my best friend was my big brother Dean." He hesitated for a moment. Then…_to hell with it. _"And I think I'm falling in love with you." _

_She stiffened in surprise, and then relaxed completely. _

_"I think I love you, too," she whispered, and kissed him, sealing the pact between them. _

_Jessica died three years later. _

_+End Flashback+ _

**First thing I'd do is pray for time to crawl. **

**Then I'd unplug the telephone, **

**And keep the TV off. **

**I'd hold you every second, **

**Say a million "I love yous." **

**That's what I'd do with one more day with you. **

He dreamed of her again that night.

It was weird, because he hadn't had _that_ particular string of nightmares in a couple of weeks, what with all the _other_ drama he'd had to fill his sleep lately. But maybe the idea of hunting a Firestarter had triggered something, because tonight he'd hardly been asleep for an hour before he found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, soaked and gasping and so damn _terrified_.

He sat there for a minute, looking around as if he hadn't already mapped out every detail of his room—one of their precautionary measures, of course. Dean was still asleep in the bed next to his, so tonight's had been a silent one—even the slightest sound would have alerted his brother.

Moving soundlessly, Sam slid out from under his blanket and stood up, heading for the bathroom.

Dean was awake by the time he got out.

Of course, since it was pitch black in the room, Sam didn't know it until a voice echoed out of the darkness as he was getting back into bed.

"You okay?"

Sam pulled the blankets up. "I'm fine."

"Sure."

"Yeah. Go back to sleep."

A moment of silence, and then a sigh. "Don't stay awake all night brooding over it." There was a rustling sound for a moment, as Dean shifted into a more comfortable position, but Dean had no trouble falling back to sleep, and it took only a few seconds for silence to fall again.

Sam leaned back against the headboard of his bead and closed his eyes, truly intending to push the dream from his mind.

And come on, was it really _his_ fault that the second he closed his eyes he found himself back at Stanford again?

No, it most certainly was not.

_+Flashback+ _

_Jess loved Disney movies. She had never quite outgrown that phase, and she insisted on trying to pull Sam down that road with her. Almost every single Saturday night found them at their place, alone, on the couch, watching whatever movie Jess decided to pull out that night. Sam didn't really mind sitting through the movies, though—just having Jessica close to him, curled up against his side, watching the movie and laughing, made it worth it. _

_She also hadn't ever outgrown Winnie the Pooh. Virtually every outfit she owned had a print of Pooh, or Eeyore, or Tigger, or Piglet, or Roo, or some other animated animal. She even still had a book of the stories, and she read it whenever she was really bored. _

_Another of Jessica's great passions was music. She was forever listening to it—while she studied, while she read, while she drove to work or anywhere else. There was always music playing softly in the background during their dates, and even when they were going to sleep at night. And she listened to _everything_! There was literally nothing on the face of the earth she didn't like—except rap. She couldn't tolerate rap. She was forever singing or dancing, and not just in the privacy of their own home. _

_But all of these little quirks—they didn't matter, to any person who knew her well. They simply made her more…_Jess_. She was that girl who wasn't afraid to embarrass herself in public. She simply seized the world with both hands, and only looked back on her joys, not her mistakes. She was that girl everyone loved—that girl who everyone secretly wanted to be—and Sam thanked God every day…that she'd chosen him. _

_+End Flashback+ _

**One more day. **

**One more time. **

**One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied. **

**But then again, **

**I know what it would do. **

**Leave me wishing still for one more day with you. **

"GPS is a _beautiful_ thing," Dean murmured, reaching out to put a careful hand on the motel room door.

Sam let out his breath in a soft chuckle, and nodded. He'd gotten on his laptop earlier that morning, and it had taken him all of fifteen minutes to find the motel Charley was staying at.

That's right. The evil creature the Winchesters were hunting…was staying at a motel. Okay, an inn—the Holiday Inn, to be exact.

But there was really no time to comment on that, because Dean was shoving open the door and charging in, guns quite literally a-blazin' because he never did see the point in caution. Sam shoved everything else aside, and ran in after him.

And apparently, Dean _hadn't_ managed to put a bullet to the Firestarter, because already random objects around the room were bursting into flames at sporadic moments.

The scuffle that followed was a strange one. Charley didn't say a single word—no threats, no yells, no lame jokes or puns. He just threw fire with a single-minded concentration, carefully closing them in.

In the distant corner of his mind that wasn't concentrating on frantically dodging the flameage, Sam _did_ have to admire the kid. His control over his power was _phenomenal—_he could control it with such absolute precision that he burned their very _bullets_ right out of the air, and did it without a single indication that he felt _anything_ about it. He didn't even seem _angry_ about them attacking him.

But before Sam could become truly creeped out by that, they were all enclosed in a ring of perfectly-controlled fire, and there were other things to worry about.

Dean had long since tossed away his gun, and Sam could _see_ him trying to come up with an alternate plan. Sam, though—Sam stared at the flames. They mesmerized him, dancing and moving closer and reaching for him…Dean was shouting in the background, but Sam ignored him as the flames licked at his legs, his arms, his face…

It didn't hurt yet.

Would it hurt at all?

Would it hurt when they killed him?

"_Why, Sam?"_

And suddenly Jessica was _in_ the flames, watching him—_glaring_ at him, with that "How could you be so stupid?" look that usually meant Sam had done _something_ wrong. But that didn't make any sense, because all he was doing was standing there…

He never saw what Dean did, but he must have done _something_, because quite suddenly the fire was gone, Charley was lying on the floor—dead or dying or unconscious, it didn't matter—and Sam _hurt_. Well, okay, he'd probably been hurt worse before—the flames hadn't had the chance to do any _real_ damage—but it still _seemed_ like the worst pain he'd ever felt. And then Dean was beside him, arms wrapped around him, half-supporting and half-embracing, yelling at him for being such an idiot—furious reprimands with an undercurrent of _Please stop doing things like that, because it scares me to death…_

But it didn't matter, none of it mattered, because though the flames were gone, Jessica was still there, staring at him, and he only saw _her_.

Only her, until the end of the world.

_Until the last rose dies._

**Leave me wishing still for one more day. **

**Leave me wishing still for one more day, **

**With you. **

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AN: All right, I have one thing to tell you guys, and it has nothing to do with this story whatsoever.

I'm going to be undertaking to edit all of my fanfics—and I do mean _all_ of them. I plan to alternate between editing and writing—you know, edit story/write chapter (or one-shot), then edit another story and write another chapter, and so on. It probably won't affect my updating too much, but if anyone has me on their alert list, you can expect a general flood of updates on things you've already seen completed. Just ignore them—this edit is mostly for my sake, anyway. I just wanted to let you know.

Now, pretty please, send in a nice review! Sammy wants you to!


End file.
